


Running Late

by devovitsuasartes



Category: Call Me By Your Name - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-03
Updated: 2018-02-03
Packaged: 2019-03-13 00:36:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13558944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devovitsuasartes/pseuds/devovitsuasartes
Summary: An accident, and the aftermath.





	Running Late

I was eighteen, and in my first year at the Conservatoire de Paris. Marzia had been my guide in my first few months there, casually holding my hand as she walked me down her favorite streets and showed me the park where she used to play as a child. She was studying engineering at École Polytechnique - one of only a tiny handful of women in her class, which meant that she was forever fending off advances from her classmates. “I don’t want to have any boyfriends at university,” she had told me, quite frankly. “Sex, yes. Boyfriends, no.”

I had ducked my head and blushed, feeling targeted by the statement, even though we hadn’t had sex since that time in the attic room. We had remained close friends, just like we had said that we would, but after Marzia confessed that she was in love with me she was never again so candid with her feelings. Perhaps she no longer felt that way about me.

My penchant for daydreaming meant I was forever running to class with my jacket half-on and my bag slung loosely over my shoulder with music sheets peeking out. My tutors were exasperated by my lack of punctuality, and I was reprimanded for it several times, but it seemed that nothing could correct the behavior. After just a few months it had already become something of an inside joke among my classmates, who would smirk and applaud sarcastically when I burst into the room several minutes after the lesson had started.

It annoyed me that I had earned such a shoddy reputation so quickly, and so one Monday morning I was determined not to be late to my first class of the day. I set out late, of course, but zig-zagged across a park and cut through a library to shorten the journey, ignoring the outraged cry of the librarian as I sprinted past the stacks. I checked my watch as I ran, and saw that there was scarcely a minute left before my lecture was scheduled to begin. But the school was just across the street - I could already see it.

I ran out into the road without looking. In hindsight, it was inevitable. At the time, it was an utter surprise.

There was an almighty _bang_ , and I remember fleetingly wondering what the noise was, and feeling the instinct to look around and find the source of it. Then the world was spinning and there was no up or down, until I thudded onto the rough ground and kept going, skidding along until I finally came to a stop.

For a few long seconds it felt like I was underwater - everything muted and distant. I could hear the muffled sounds of people screaming and exclamations of shock, but it all felt very far away. Then, as though I had run out of oxygen and swum for the surface, I emerged. The pain crept in by degrees, rising quickly with seemingly no ceiling in sight, and I thought numbly, over and over again: _oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no…_

I was desperate for an out of body experience, so that I could be away from this pain and think clearly and see the damage that was done. I had no idea how badly I was hurt - whether it was just bruising, perhaps a broken bone or two, or whether I was dying. Was my ribcage crushed? Was my skull cracked open? Were my brains spilling out onto the road, even as they tried to make sense of what had happened? Was I paralyzed - _god_ , was I paralyzed? Would I live, but spend the rest of my life in a wheelchair? I would not do it, I decided. If I was paralyzed, I would kill myself at the first opportunity.

There were people standing around me. They were not crouching down to ask me if I was alright, and I knew that was a bad sign. I saw a woman with her hand over her mouth, her eyes wide, staring down at me. _What?_ I wanted to scream at her. _What do you see? How bad is it?_

Everything was becoming vague and muddy again, but before I lost consciousness, I thought of Oliver. Even in a situation such as this, I had a great capacity for melodrama and self-pity - mentally casting myself in the role of a tragic figure in a Shakespeare play, a lifeless figure wept over by their lover. I thought of Oliver perhaps hearing about the accident at a social gathering. _The poor Perlman boy_ , they would say. _Ran out into the road and was killed by a car. He was only eighteen._

I could see, as though it was playing on a movie screen in front of me, Oliver’s face dropping from an interested smile into an expression of utter devastation. I imagined him wailing his remorse: _If only I had not left him! If only I had stayed!_

But that rang false, even to my addled brain. A truer image crept forward - of Oliver politely excusing himself from the table, and going out to his car, and just sitting. Sitting quietly, his head bowed, his face tight with sorrow. Silent tears spilling over and rolling down his cheeks. A great wound in his chest that could not and never would be mended. And this image was not thrilling in its melodrama, or satisfying in its twisted retribution. It filled me with horror, and regret, and disgust at myself for being so careless with my own life - for throwing the body that he had loved so tenderly in front of a car to be brutalized and mangled. I wanted to tell him that I was sorry, and I wanted to take it all back, to leave my dormitory ten minutes earlier so that I would not have to run.

At the time, I thought that all of this was playing out while I lay in the road. But somewhere in the middle of the fantasizing and imagining and speculating I had slipped into unconsciousness. I was not awake when the ambulance arrived, nor did I wake on the journey to the hospital.

When I finally opened my eyes again, it was to a white tiled ceiling and a general feeling of drugged numbness. My body felt stiff and unmovable. Someone was holding my hand. I heard a soft, broken cry and looked over to find my father by my bedside, looking exhausted. His eyes were bloodshot.

“Papa,” I tried to croak, but my mouth was too dry. I licked my lips with a tongue that felt like sandpaper, convulsed my throat and managed to work up some saliva, then tried again. “How’d you get here so fast?”

His expression pinched, but before he could reply I felt a hand on my cheek and diverted my gaze to the other side of the bed. My mother was bending over to kiss me carefully on the forehead, and she murmured, “Welcome back, _amore_ ,” and when she pulled back I could see that she had been crying.

I had so many questions, but one emerged above all the others: “Are my hands OK?”

If they were not - if they had been crushed, or amputated, or ruined beyond what physical therapy could help - it would destroy me. Music was everything to me. It was how I spoke to the world. It was the only way I could properly vent my feelings - whether of grief, or joy, or excitement. If I could not play the piano or the guitar, I would feel trapped inside my own body with no means of escape.

“Just scrapes, darling,” my mother assured me. “Your hands will be fine.”

The slight emphasis she placed on _your hands_ made me suspect that the rest of my body had not escaped harm so easily, but there was a more pressing question at hand. It was a long flight from the United States to Paris, and my parents would have needed time to be alerted by the hospital, pack a few things, get to the airport, buy tickets, wait for their boarding call… for them to be here, now, I must have been unconscious for at least a day.

“How long?” I croaked. I was exhausted, and starting to drift away again, but I needed to know.

I could hear my father weeping softly, his fingers tight on mine, but it was my mother who answered. “Six weeks,” she said, caressing my temple, and I could feel that my dark curls of hair were gone, with only bristles left behind. “You were in a coma, darling.” Her voice grew thick. “You had swelling on your brain. We nearly lost you.”

My first thought was that I was definitely very late to my class. Then the remorse and self-loathing creeped back and I was filled with disgust at what I had put my parents through, because of my carelessness, and I closed my eyes and whispered, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” and then I passed out again.

In the end, I had to repeat my first year of school. I was in the hospital for another month after I woke up, waiting for my bones to heal and for the doctors to determine that I was not severely brain-damaged. There was a long, deep wound in my side that had occurred when a sharp edge of the crumpled metal hood of the car stabbed into me. My left knee had been crushed by the impact, the femur above it snapped neatly in two. The doctors replaced the knee with an artificial one, and after about a year I was able to walk without limping, but it was a source of pain on rainy days for the rest of my life.

I was told, over and over, that I was extremely lucky - an assessment I thoroughly agreed with. For months after the accident I was plagued with the after-effects of the brain injury - headaches that left me incapable of doing anything but lying in bed with the curtains drawn, and bouts of dizziness and vomiting. But in time, I healed, and was able to start my studies again. I was, unquestionably, extremely lucky.

 

* * *

 

I was reunited with Oliver several years later, when I was twenty-four. We had written each other a few letters over the years, and exchanged a few phone calls. I knew that he had not gone through with the wedding after all, but we were separated by a great ocean and I did not dare to ask him if he thought we might have a future together. I had been rejected by Oliver before, and I did not wish to repeat the experience.

It was a pleasant surprise, then, when out of the blue I received a letter from him announcing that he was going to be in Paris for a week - just a getaway, he said - and asking if I’d like to meet up. A few weeks later I was sitting in a cafe, ten minutes early for our rendez-vous, my head buried in a book so that he would not arrive to find me craning my neck and searching for him anxiously.

A shadow fell across the page. Then, in his warm baritone, I heard, “Elio.”

I looked up. I had forgotten how handsome he was, and it temporarily stunned me to see him in the flesh. He had matured, and only grown better-looking with age. I had managed to scrounge up some composure over the years, however, so I smiled and stood up, touched his arm and exclaimed, “Oliver!” - then kissed him once on each cheek in the European manner.

If he was caught off guard by the casual familiarity, he didn’t show it. He beamed and sat down opposite me, his gaze raking over my face and hair. “It’s so good to see you,” he said, and I was delighted at the raw honesty and sincerity in the statement.

We talked at the cafe for hours, easily, as if we had never parted. I wanted to know everything that he had been up to - his work, his interests, his travels. I told him about my studies at the Conservatoire, and my current employ as a freelance musician - mainly playing piano for theatrical performances around the city. We talked about books we had read and about old times, and as we talked we leaned in closer, our heads nearly brushing as I showed him the autograph on the title page of the book I was reading, boasting about the time I met the author.

Before I came out to meet him, I had been determined that I would not make any advances. I would be cool and detached, and subtly show off about my accomplishments, and perhaps make veiled references to romances that I’d had. I wanted to impress him, but not let him think I was trying to impress him. I was so focused on my own self-control, on ensuring that I did not make any moves on him, that I was caught utterly off-guard when Oliver made the first move.

It was later, after we had moved on from the cafe to dinner and from dinner to after-dinner drinks. He had mentioned that he should be getting back to his hotel, and I offered to walk with him without giving it much thought, and we were on a deserted side street when I announced - happily, a little drunkenly - “I love this! I’ve missed you so much.”

He stopped walking, and I did too. I turned to him in confusion, and found his expression open and soft. “I’ve missed you too,” he said, and then he sank his fingers into my hair, cupped the back of my skull, and kissed me.

I was shocked, and then I was hard, with little interval in between. I clung to him embarrassingly, chasing his mouth, pressing my thigh against his groin until I felt his hardening ridge. I started to unbutton his shirt right there in the street. He put his hands on mine, stilling them, and asked ever-so-seriously, “Elio, will you come up my hotel room?”

I was so happy that I stopped kissing him and just hugged him, tightly, as though he had given me a wonderful gift.

We parted for only as long as it took to pass through the hotel lobby and nod curtly at the receptionist, and as soon as the elevator doors closed Oliver was on me again, kissing my neck while I bucked against him and gasped. While he was unlocking the door to his room I was already unbuckling his belt, and he laughed and exclaimed, “Elio!” as though scandalized.

I managed to get his shirt off and his pants unbuttoned before we even reached the bed, and he smirked at me as he stepped out of them, and then peeled off his socks while I lay back on the firm mattress and cool, clean sheets, my whole body shaking with anticipation. Then he was on me, and I went limp, closing my eyes in ecstasy as he unbuttoned my jeans and dragged them off in a flourish, then went to work on the buttons of my shirt.

Oliver kissed his way down my chest as he exposed it, moaning quietly as his lips caressed my skin. I reached up and buried my hands in my own hair, muttering obscenities under my breath.

Then, as his fingers reached the last button, he stopped. I opened my eyes and lifted my head to find Oliver staring down at my torso, his face frozen. “What is it?” I asked.

By way of reply, he laid his fingers tentatively on my skin, over the ugly scar that had been left behind when the sharp metal edge of the car’s hood had stabbed me. I was suddenly very embarrassed, concerned that he might think me hideous or deformed.

“It’s nothing,” I assured him, reaching up and grabbing his head, trying to pull his gaze away from the scar and back to my face.

But like a stubborn pony he reared back, sitting on his haunches, and then his gaze landed on the mass of surgery scars on my knee and he practically shouted, “Oh _fuck,_ Elio!”

“Shhh,” I hushed desperately, staring at him like he was mad, sitting up to try and hold him even as he scanned my body for other scars, and found them with soft sounds of dismay. “It’s fine, they’re old injuries.”

“You didn’t have them last time we were together.”

“It happened after that.”

“What happened?”

“A car, just a car, I ran out into the road without looking…”

“You _idiot._ ”

He sounded furious. This was nothing like my imaginings of his possible reactions at the time. He was not wailing his grief and remorse, nor was he enduring the news with quiet dignity. He seemed out of control, full of anger that he had no idea what to do with. I was suddenly a little afraid of him.

“It was a long time ago,” I reiterated, trying to placate him. “When I was eighteen.”

“Eighteen,” he echoed. I could see him thinking. “You wrote to me when you were eighteen. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I… don’t know.” I did know. I had been ashamed of my own stupidity, haunted by my imaginary Oliver’s tears, and I had not wanted to inflict that pain upon the real Oliver. If I had been shot, or perhaps been a passenger in a car accident, I would have told him. But the accident had been entirely my own fault, and there would have been no cause for him to feel pity or sympathy for me. Lamely, I offered, “I thought perhaps my parents might have told you.”

“They didn’t. No one told me anything.”

He still sounded angry, but it had fizzled out a little. He moved away from me and sat on the edge of the bed in just his underwear, his shoulders hunched, his elbows resting on his knees. Tentatively, I moved to sit next to him, cross-legged.

“You should have called me,” he said at last. “I would have come.”

“I was in a coma,” I retorted unthinkingly, meaning it as an excuse. “And when I woke up…”

But he interrupted me, raising his voice again. “A coma?”

“Yes, for a month or so.”

“A month or so!”

“Are you just going to keep repeating everything I say?” I asked, trying to lighten the mood. But he was having none of it.

“This isn’t funny, Elio. You could have died.”

“I didn’t think you cared.”

That was an utter lie. It didn’t come from a place of truth, it came from a pocket of bitterness and resentment that I had buried deep inside me, until I had almost forgotten its existence. I said it because, quite suddenly, I wanted to hurt him. I wanted him to know how much pain I had been in after he left - _that_ was what I had wanted to tell him about, far more than my accident. Not the physical pain of my shattered knee and swollen brain, but the pain of his leaving, which had left no marks but had marked me more deeply than any other event in my young life.

Well, it worked. I had said it because I wanted to devastate him, and he was devastated. He looked at me as if I had physically struck him, his eyes wide and shocked, and asked, “How can you say that?”

Suddenly I felt sick - from the alcohol, from the conversation, from how this otherwise wonderful day had so suddenly turned sour. I stood up from the bed and grabbed my jeans, self-conscious now. “I should go,” I muttered.

“No!”

Oliver stood up and took the jeans from my hands, tossing them behind him. He touched my hip and leaned against me, burying his face against my shoulder.

“Please,” he begged quietly. “Please don’t go. I’m sorry.”

That made me hate myself even more, because he had _nothing_ to apologize for. But as much as I was desperate to leave, I knew only too well that doing so would hurt him further.

We sat down on the bed and I held him for a while, much as he had held me that day after he found me with the peach. He felt very cold, and I was worried about him, so I suggested that we get under the blankets. Oliver appeared relieved by the suggestion - taking it as confirmation that I had agreed to stay. We got into bed and he curled up behind me, his hairy chest warm against my back, his fingers just brushing the scar on my side.

I woke up with a hangover and an ache in my knee, and I knew that it was raining even before I opened my eyes. Oliver and I had separated in the night, so I eased away from him and sat on the edge of the bed, rubbing the joint with my hands and carefully bending and extending my leg to alleviate the pain.

Oliver stirred behind me, and I knew by the change in his breathing that he was awake. I glanced over my shoulder.

“It hurts when it rains,” I explained, my voice still hoarse from sleep.

I reached back with one hand, and he reached out and took hold of it with his own. We sat there like that until the pain started to ease, and then I returned to his arms.

**Author's Note:**

> My other CMBYN fics:
> 
>  
> 
> [Midnight](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12929373/chapters/29545866)  
> [Americano](http://archiveofourown.org/works/13354341/chapters/30577701)  
> [Crossroads](http://archiveofourown.org/works/13340778)


End file.
